As American art museums are accepting copies of paintings made in China on glass, people are debating whether that is okay. Specifically, portraits of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart are causing this debate. 200 years ago, when Stuart's original painting was created, Chinese artists were using a process of making reverse painting on glass to recreate that piece. This was an issue that Stuart attempted to fight but was not very successful at, since today there are still a number of these copies floating around. The quality of these pieces are debated, as well as the idea that each piece has different "nuances" other than those intended in the original. Some portray him more accurately, as a middle aged man, while others tend to edge on a more idealized version of Washington (fewer wrinkles, ect.) A copy of a Stuart painting has recently been donated to the New Britain Museum of American Art (the oldest museum of American art in the U.S.), which they have accepted. This also raises the question, if a foreign copy of an American painting is created, does that copy belong in an American art museum? Join discussion...

This is an interesting New York Times opinion piece about current sales of conceptual art, but artist Damien Hirst, and it's "value". A good read. Join discussion...

A man was fined $1,227 for knocking off the head of a wax Hitler figure in Germany the other day. Although art glorifying Hitler has been banned, the old taboos are starting to wear off. The artist (Madame Tussauds) justified her work by saying museum avoided politics, arguing Hitler stood for a significant part of German history and his waxwork therefore had a legitimate part in the exhibition. Join discussion...

Recently, in Venezuela, galleries have been displaying an exhibition called Bodies Revealed. For this exhibition, human corpses are dried, dissected to show the systems of the bodies, and displayed as art. The exhibition consists of fourteen complete human corpses and 200 human organs. Its purpose is "to tell the story of the miraculous systems at work within each of us every second of our existence." The displaying of dead human bodies as art has recently become very controversial. Some argue that it is immoral, while others argue that it is artistic and natural. Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, announced his disapproval of the exhibition on a television show, saying that it was "moral decomposition". Chavez closed the Bodies Revealed exhibition in the galleries in Caracas, Venezuela. Join discussion...

The robbery of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990 is the biggest modern art theft to date. The robbers masqueraded as police and managed to dupe the night guards and in a relaxed manners were able to steal dozens of works of art while they took eighty-one minutes and multiple trips to their car. They wore no masks, it was all on video, and the guards distinctly remember their faces. That only adds to the mystery of how these two men were able to calmly and methodically steal these seemingly random (not the most valuable in the gallery) works of art through alarms and safety triggers sounding. There has been no real trace of either these men or of the the stolen works in any world market or private collection. Private investigators do though have over 10,000 leads, none of which are at all guaranteed accurate or have led to any findings so far. Join discussion...

On April 25, 2009 a new art gallery opened at the Mid- City Arts. It was dedicated entirely to street arts, a.k.a. graffiti. The artist was 36 year old Daniel Ramos, alias Chaka. For the opening, 700 fans showed up. The show runs until May 24. However, the reason I chose this article was due to the amount of controversy that surrounds it. The article is posted so that comments are allowed. The few comments posted people show the outrage of some people that such a show would be allowed. Join discussion...

In Madrid, the director of the Reina Sofia Museum, Manuel Borja-Villel, has made an agreement with Miguel Zugaza, that states 20 prints by Goya will go to the Reina Sofia, from the Prado, on a long term loan. This is controversial because the royal decree made in 1995 states that the Prado owns Spain's national art collection up to 1881 (Picasso's birth) and the Reina Sofia has art after 1881. The prints that are being loaned were made between 1799 and 1810 which elongates the spirit of the 1995 agreement and reorders a central theme of Spain's art historical conventions (theme that modernism started with Picasso). The work still belongs to the Prado, however, and is merely on loan. The Reina Sofia wanted the Goya's because the museum believes that Goya is a key part of understanding 20th century art. Join discussion...

Richard Prince has been sued by French photographer Patrick Cariou for editing his photographs of the Rastafarian culture without permission. Richard Prince seemed to edit these photos in a derogatory manner and claims it is art. Join discussion...

Joe Medeiros was struck by the robbery in 1911 of the Mona Lisa by Vincenzo Peruggia. As a filmmaker and writer, he was determined to turn it into some kind of film. As he was researching it for a documentary though, he found out that the story really had a lot more to it. Peruggia, an Italian, was bringing the painting back to Florence, Italy as an act of patriotism, holding that Napoleon stole the painting from Italy. To Peruggia, he was only reclaiming Italy's lost property. Medeiros still dug deeper and found that Francis I had in fact purchased the piece from Da Vinci and it was indeed French property. The painting was returned and Peruggia caught, but not before the Mona Lisa toured Italy and before Peruggia became something of a national celebrity, receiving all sorts of food and wine while in jail. Peruggia was only imprisoned for a little over a year, though he died soon after in WW1. Medeiros though, still holds that there is a lot left unsolved. After all, how did Peruggia outsmart all the guards and police and walk out of the Louvre with the Mona Lisa? And was patriotism his only reason behind it? Did he act alone? How did he actually leave the museum? Medeiros claims that he has dug and found the answers, but those will be kept secret until the film. Join discussion...

To mark the start of the six-month presidency of the European Union an installation piece was commissioned by the Czech Republic to be located in Brussels at the European Council. In the piece titled "Entropa" by David Cerny, each country is represented. Cerny claimed that each piece was done by one of 27 artists, this was false. He had constructed the whole piece. Also, the stereotypes dipicted in the installation have angered many of the member countries. The outline of France is dipicted with a banner and the word "strike", Italy a soccer field, Bulgaria with interlocking hole-in-the-floor toilets, Romania as a Dracula-themed amusment park, Netherlands as flooded, and Germany as a series of highways that could resemble a swastika. Join discussion...